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![Miroslav Vitous - Mountain Call [LP]](http://seasickbham.com/cdn/shop/files/cover_497adcd7-c32c-4e7e-bb74-985ea294480b_1024x.jpg?v=1776367935)
Description
Release Date: 4/17/2026
Label: Ecm Records
Label: Ecm Records
Mountain Call, his first ECM leader date in ten years, is a peak achievement in Miroslav Vitous's music, presenting the bassist in varying ensemble configurations that prominently include the late French clarinetist Michel Portal and American drummer Jack DeJohnette, among others. Effectively an artist self-portrait, it persuasively brings together several tendencies and streams in his work, and bears testimony to his multiple skills as dynamic improviser, jazz composer, arranger and creative sampling pioneer. The flow of the album balances in-the-moment improvisation with sequences in which studio technology is harnessed to shape new settings for the players.
The prodigiously gifted Czech bassist and founding member of Weather Report first came to ECM in the late 1970s, in a collaborative trio with Terje Rypdal and Jack DeJohnette. Back then, Miroslav and Jack made for an eruptive, powerful rhythm section, successfully revisited on Vitous's Universal Syncopations album of 2003, and on Mountain Call the combination also has a centering role to play. Bassist and drummer interact dynamically on "Tribal Dance" and "Epilog," their playing framed on the latter by Miroslav's big chords for orchestra, and Jack also solos inside Vitous's tripartite "Evolution," with a painterly attention to detail. On "Evolution," Miroslav and Jack are joined, on bass clarinet, by Bob Mintzer, the prolific reedman who had been an important contributor to the prize-winning Universal Syncopations II album,
On the five-part suite "Rhapsody," Esperanza Spalding, in her first ECM appearance, comes to the fore, singing Vitous's lyrics and using her voice also as a textural element. The section headed "Fun and Games" has Spalding, Vitous and saxophonist Gary Campbell in call-and-response exchanges amid Miroslav's soundscape of orchestral samples. Gerald Cleaver has a significant role to play inside the suite, too, sensitively coloring and shading from the drum kit.